Mind your words: Affective experience during reading mediates the effect of textual valence on comprehension

Abstract In today's society, we are constantly absorbing information via text (e.g., news, social media), much of which may be affectively charged. However, to date, little is known about how the affective framing of the text itself may give rise to various affective experiences during reading. We examined how subtle changes to wording (negatively or positively valenced framing of the same content) influenced affective experiences during reading and subsequent comprehension. Results show that (a) affective framing in text elicited congruent subjective affective states throughout reading, (b) subjective affective valence throughout reading impacted comprehension at various levels, and (c) subjective affective valence mediated the relationship between affective framing and how participants integrated information from the text in their summaries, as well as if they included affect in their summaries. This indicates that even subtle affectively valenced content in text can indirectly influence some aspects of comprehension through eliciting subjective affective experiences in the reader.